The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. I'm closing this a little early as the consensus appears to be beyond doubt. Ad Orientem ( talk) 02:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Charles L. Walters (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

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Notability. Anmccaff ( talk) 17:03, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply

• Keep Walters clears WP:POLITICIAN with flying colors as an elected member of the New Jersey General Assembly, a fact documented by reliable and verifiable sourcing. This is a bad faith nomination from an editor who has been disruptively editing the article for Sea Bright, New Jersey. That the nominator appears to have ignored WP:BEFORE and was explicitly informed about WP:POLITICIAN only aggravates the situation. Alansohn ( talk) 17:09, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply
• Yep. Speedy keep was in the state legislature, therefore, inherently notable for our purposes. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 17:39, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 17:40, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 17:40, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Comment: First, although in this case the obvious whiff of WP:OWN makes it almost unneeded, it is traditional for article creators to note the fact. Next, State reps, do not clear notability with "flying colors", Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes notes that they "usually" pass. A glance at state rep articles suggests why, they usually have other accomplishments beyond the simple fact of election. Genuine notability doesn't lead to a stub based on a short obit.

Next, the article appears to be created in response to a red-linked "notable" in another article. That's backwards, and that has some obvious implications.

Finally, if you beieve this is a "bad faith nomination" @ Alansohn: open it elsewhere, and let your article stand on its merits, if any, here. Anmccaff ( talk) 17:50, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply

• Keep Subject was a member of the New Jersey Assembly in the 1890s. Passes WP:Politician "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office". -- Enos733 ( talk) 22:06, 12 June 2017 (UTC) reply
• Snow keep. Wikipedia has a very long-established practice of keeping articles about state legislators. It is discussed occasionally but there has been no sign of any consensus to change this.-- Arxiloxos ( talk) 01:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC) reply
• Keep with a side order of snow. People who have verifiably served in state legislatures are kept — they do not have to achieve anything special that would mark them out as more notable than their other colleagues in the legislature before they qualify, because state legislators are a class of topic, just like federal congresspeople, where Wikipedia consensus has decided that our goal is to be as complete as feasibly possible a reference for all of them. Walters served in the 1890s, meaning that proper sourcing is going to be harder to locate than it is for someone who's serving in the house in 2017 — it won't generally be sitting out on Google for the most part, but will require digging into archival sourcing such as microfilms or news retrieval databases like ProQuest — but we know for a fact that improved sourcing exists somewhere, because state legislative politics is a thing that media covers. So this could certainly still be flagged for {{ refimprove}}, but the only thing a state legislator requires to be non-deletable is the fact that his holding of the office is verifiable in at least one reliable source. Any further issues with the article beyond that are matters for the researching and editing processes, not the AFD process. Bearcat ( talk) 13:36, 13 June 2017 (UTC) reply
• Keep on the fact alone that he was a state legislator at one point. South Nashua ( talk) 15:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC) reply
• Keep based purely on the sources already present within the article. A clear GNG pass. Exemplo347 ( talk) 17:41, 15 June 2017 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.